BURNS was twenty-six before he ever entered the
home of a woman sufficiently well-to-do to have
carpets on her floors. Though the last ten years of
his life included many friendships with ladies, his
basic ideas of the other sex were the fruit of the
peasant environment he was reared in. His senti-
ment and chivalry were literary by-products; under-
neath them was always the crude realism of the
Ayrshire countryfolk. In moments of stress it was
only too apt to come to the surface.

The only subtlety the peasant women of Burns's
youth could claim was that native to every daughter
of Eve. Schooling was too expensive to waste on
girls. The majority, like Agnes Broun, could not
write their own names; many could not even spell
out the Scriptures or the Psalms of David in metre.
Their fathers, their husbands, or the minister could
read the Bible to them, and thus they could obtain
the light of salvation at second hand. But this is
not to say that they knew no literature. In fact it
was only among an illiterate population that the
songs and ballads of popular tradition were living
realities. James Hogg's mother spoke for her whole
class when she told Sir Walter Scott that he had
killed her ballads by writing them down. Learning

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